Friday night, single but not dateless! LoL. I just got back from a great dinner/coffee night out with a guy I've been friends with since sophomore year (more or less) in Ateneo. I remember the first time I met him: I was gobsmacked that this guy (who is "not a metrosexual") was so secure in his masculinity that he had his nails painted (clear polish lang naman) by, Allen, who is now the third arm of our KKB trio. (Miss you Allen-girl!)

Tonight I went sans makeup, wore a white top (which adds 10lbs instantly), my hair was acting weird (not in a good way) and it was okay. I didn't have to worry that my laugh was too brash or my smile too wide. It helps to know that even at my best I'm not his type, and he's not mine either, so that takes out the whole chemistry thing out of the equation.

It's just so refreshing to be able to turn off my mind/mouth filter and just spill out my guts, in all their mushy/angsty/gory glory, and be secure that he'll still talk to me tomorrow. Hahaha.

And he turns on that Rory-can-only-parse-PG-content-so-no-green-jokes-muna filter for me.

I totally respect him. For being excellent professionally, for his innate streetwise supersense, for  being a good social analyst (for those moments I wish I could be more suwabe so I ask him to assess and advise). I can trust him to tell me the truth, even if I may not like it.
Like: "Dude, ang dungis mo nanaman." LoL.

And he sticks up for me.
Yes, I'm a big girl and I can take care of myself, but there are just some places, social situations, I can't go into and he goes there. And I didn't even have to ask.

Sigh. ^__________^

So to all the other guys out there who are genuine friends to girls, with no hidden agendas,
three cheers for you! We could do with more friends like you!

And Leo, I know you read this (you stalker you!) so here's some more wavy arms and buckets of "affection affection affection!!!" going out from me to you. Micci, you got a good guy here. :D

PS - Dude, you still owe me chocolate! LoL

Someone opened my eyes recently to the cliques within Faura (CS/Physics/MIS departments, and headquarters of the nerd/geek crowd). To the non-Ateneans, skip this paragraph. There's a front-end and a back-end crowd, and the back-enders (smokers, teachers pets) are actually front-enders in the development process (interface, flash) and the front-enders (Magick card players, PSP gamers, otakus) are back-enders in dev't (programming, SAD). Eureka moment! Yun lang...

That same someone told me recently about the hard time she's having with her friends, both of both the front-end and back-end genre. She's a committed Xian -- doesn't smoke, drink, drugs, cuss -- but the people she hangs out with do, hence the hard time. And that made me think. As much as I can't live without my spiritual family (meaning church friends), I really appreciate my college friends, so I just wanted to blog about how thankful I am for my super fun (and super sober) friends! Now this isn't going to be a comprehensive list of all my college friends, it would be too long, and there are so many I wish could see them more often (you know who you are, LET'S COFFEE/TEA!). The folks I'm appreciating here are just those I see on a fairly regular basis. When we go out it's never just to "partay" or get drunk (always popular with our generation), we have real honest-to-goodness quality times!

For example, today I had lunch with my coursemate Marita/Ann and her boyfriend Allan. I really look forward to these monthly outings. Today we tried the "would you go out with a guy who..." game. My other friend Leo constantly taunts me with a far more perverted version of this game,  mostly because it never fails to ilicit either a lecture on the sanctity of marriage or wry grimace from me (more about Leo later). Our light talks always end with us trying to solve the problems of the world, or at least of the Philippines, by proposing political campaigns, school programs, business ideas, etc. Sometimes Allan and I have our dinner break together because we live/work really near each other. It's hard to find people at our offices with whom we can have thought-provoking conversations with, so we really make it a point to go out for digestive, social and intellectual stimulation. Allan was in the prestigious Ateneo Debate Society, I'm just your regular supernerd and papyvore, we're both third culture kids and philosophy buddies at the church of deJesus, so our conversations get really lively. Allan also ranks high on my books for giving me my best compliment EVER: "You're one of the weirdest people I know, so I can talk to you about stuff I can't talk to normal people about." Hooray for weirdoes! Having said that, his gorgeous and easygoing girlfriend Ann is also really quirky and I love her to bits!

Most of my friends know that I don't "date" (Date = guy + girl + night out + romantic overtones). I don't want to do the romance for at least another year, so it's refreshing to have guy friends you can meet up with for a coffee, dinner, a movie, without the mushiness. A couple of nights ago, my friend RJ was in the Makati area so we had dinner in Glorietta. Now although RJ would be the first to tell you that he's not much of an academic, he _is_ MIS personified, balancing system development, management, and business, and he does it really well. He's also my "dealer," supplying me with my periodical fix software, anime and other procrastination tools. Plus, he's one of the nicest and most generous guys I've met, someone I go to for practical advice on business, how to rescuscitate my computer, relate with guys and with "normals." He's probably had to pull out some of his hair because of me, and I tell him I'm his "inconvenient friend." Like the one time I called him up from a taxi to ask how to get to my home. (Yep, you read that right)
 [I just remembered I have two friends named RJ, both in MIS, both great guys, both 3rd culture kids, both use the alias Bogart sometimes. <Twilight zone theme: dinner dinner dinner dinner...>  ] Anyway, here's to the RJs of the world! Thanks for restoring my faith in men!!


Then there's KKB. KKB stands for whatever you want it to stand for (Kanya kanyang bayad, Kalye Katipunan Bunch, etc) but it's also what Leo, Allen and I call ourselves. We've been talking about doing a webcomic about our trio for so long, we just never got around to getting further than the first strip. Anyway, back in college we were the weirdest of the otherwise normal MIS crowd. Leo (of the pervy question fame above) was the best dressed guy in the course, and he often got asked if he was a metrosexual, to which he would always reply, "I'm not gay." Victor Allen (real name NOT changed to protect identity) tells the story of how she used to be a man, she put her manhood in a garapon (jar) when she was 10. I was the extremist girl, coming in one day dressed like I walked out of a Vogue cover, the next as a confused goth/Charlie's angel/Matrix character, next as a bohemian starving artist. Anyway, we freaks gravitated towards each other, and our gravitational attraction was directly proportional to our freakishness. Which was exponential, when you factor in our collective geek, otaku, nerd, outcast, dork, goomba, and snob points.

KKB is actually going out tomorrow, we've been planning to see Sweeney Todd for ages, but our schedules weren't synched. As Tim Burton fans we wanted to celebrate the occassion by going out "in character," which we inadvertently end up doing anyway but this time we wanted it "official." So the challenge was to dress "goth" while wearing white. So we've been enthusiastically planning our outfits for weeks. Tonight I went to check which cinemas are still showing the film. The answer: only those outside Metro Manila.

Guess we'll have to go out in full white-goth regalia while watching... (wait for it...) a Chuck Norris dvd at my place.

Nooooooooooooooooh!!!